Their Majesties' Servants. Annals of the English Stage (Volume 2 of 3)

The contest in the third act is splendidly phrased; but the dénouement is so confused and incomplete, that Young was obliged to add an epilogue to explain what was supposed to take place at and after the fall of the curtain! Garrick substituted a coarse epilogue which was spoken by sprightly Kitty Clive, who loved to give coarseness all its point; but it could not save the piece, and it seriously offended the author. Since then, "The Brothers" has descended into that oblivion which fittingly enfolds nearly all the classical tragedies of the last century. It is not without its beauties; but it does not picture the period it affects to pourtray. The "sir" and "madam" sound as harshly as the "citizen Agamemnon," which the French Republic introduced into Racine's plays; and the epithets are only one degree less absurd than the "Oui, Milor," which Voltaire's Beersheba addresses to King David.

Barry's Jaffier, played for the first time on the 21st of November 1752, placed him on an equality with Garrick in that character; but he was not so great in this as in Jones's tragedy, the "Earl of Essex," which he played on the 21st of February, to Smith's Southampton, and the Countess of Rutland of Mrs. Cibber. One sentence in this tragedy, uttered by Barry, seems to have had an almost incredible effect. When the Earl, pointing to the Countess of Rutland in a swoon, exclaimed, "Oh, look there!" Barry's attitude and pathetic expression of voice were such that "all the critics in the pit burst into tears, and then shook the theatre with repeated and unbounded applause." The bricklayer poet, whom Chesterfield brought from Drogheda, only to ultimately die, half-starved, in a garret near Covent Garden, attributed the success of the piece to his own powers, whereas it was due to the wonderful acting of Barry and Mrs. Cibber alone.

With this season James Quin disappeared from the stage. For a year or two he had not acted. The triumphs of Garrick, followed by those of Barry, drove from the scene the old player who, for nearly forty years, belonged to the now bygone school of Betterton, but particularly of Booth, whose succession he worthily held, rather than of Garrick. James Quin stands, however, worthily among, if not on a level with, those actors of two different eras, having something of each, but yet distinct from either. Such a man deserves a few words in addition to those I have already written.

The theatrical life of Quin embraces the following dates. James Quin began his career in Dublin in 1714, and ended it at Bath in 1753. His first character was Abel in the "Committee;" his last, Hamlet, played at Bath (whither he had retired), not for his own benefit, but for that of his friend, Ryan.59 Of doing kindnesses to friends, James Quin was never weary; and if he did say that Garrick in Othello looked like the black boy in Hogarth's picture he was only temporarily jealous of Roscius. Quin was a careless dresser of his characters; and he had a sharp sarcasm, but not a lasting ill-feeling, for those who pretended to better taste, and gave it practical application.

I have already spoken of Quin's early life; his English birth, his Irish breeding, his disputed legitimacy, and his succession to an estate, from which he was debarred by the rightful proprietors. Necessity and some qualifications directed him to the Dublin stage, where he played under Ashbury, Queen Anne's old master of elocution. Quin, then about one-and-twenty, gave such promise that Chetwood the prompter recommended him "to try London," where at Drury Lane, during three seasons, he played whatever character he was cast for, and made use of opportunity whenever that character happened to be a prominent one.

In 1718 Quin passed to Lincoln's Inn Fields, where for four years60 he was the great support of that house.61 I have previously noticed his misadventure with Bowen the actor, whom he slew in honest self-defence under great provocation. It was kind-hearted, but hot-blooded, Quin's hard fate to kill two actors. A subordinate player named Williams was the Decius to Quin's Cato. Williams, in delivering the line "Cæsar sends health to Cato," pronounced the last name so affectedly – something like "Keeto" – that Quin in his impatience could not help exclaiming, "Would he had sent a better messenger!" This greatly irritated the little Welsh actor – the more that he had to repeat the name in nearly every sentence of his scene with Cato, and Quin did not fail to look so hard at him when he pronounced the name that the secondary player's irritation was at the highest when the scene concluded; and Decius turned away, with the remark —

"When I relate, hereafter,The tale of this unhappy embassy,All Rome will be in tears."

That tale, Williams went and told in the green-room, where he waited for Quin, who came off at the end of two scenes more, after uttering the word "death." It was what he brought, without meaning it, to the irascible Welshman, who attacked him on the not unreasonable ground that Quin had rendered him ridiculous in the eyes of the audience; and he demanded the satisfaction which gentlemen who wore swords were in the habit of giving to each other. Quin treated the affair as a mere joke, but the Welsh actor would not be soothed. After the play, he lay in wait for the offender in the Covent Garden Piazza, where much malapert blood was often spilt. There Quin could not refuse to defend himself, however ill-disposed he was to accept the combat, and after a few passes, Williams lay lifeless on the flag-stones, and Quin was arrested by the watch. Ultimately, he was absolved from blame, and no further harm came of it than the lasting regret of having shed the blood of a fellow-creature.

At a later period, Quin was well-nigh slaying a more ignoble foe than Williams, namely, Theophilus Cibber, whose scoundrelly conduct towards his beautiful and accomplished wife, Quin alluded to, under a very forcible epithet applied to her husband. Out of this incident arose a quarrel, and swords were again drawn in the Piazza, where Quin and Cibber slashed each other across the arm and fingers, till they were parted by the bystanders.

In 1732, Quin, with the company from the "Fields," established himself in the new theatre in Covent Garden, whence, after two seasons, he passed to Drury Lane, where he continued till 1741; after which, with some intervals, he again enrolled himself at the "Garden," where he remained till he quietly withdrew, in 1751. Of his rivalry with Garrick, I have already said something. If he was vanquished in that contest, he was not humiliated, though I think he was a little humbled in spirit. His great merit is, nevertheless, incontestable. His Cato and Brutus were good; he was excellent in Henry VIII., Volpone, Glo'ster, Apemantus, Ventidius, the Old Batchelor, and "all the Falstaffs." He was happy only in a few speeches of Pierre, especially, "I could have hugged the greasy rogues, they pleased me so!" and his execration of the senate. His Plain Dealer is commended, and the soliloquies of Zanga are eulogised. His Macheath and some other operatic parts, he played and sung extremely well. His failures were Macbeth, Othello, Richard, Lear, Chamont, and Young Bevil. His continuing to play these in opposition to Garrick and Barry censures his judgment. Davies says, he often gave true weight and dignity to sentiment by a well-regulated tone of voice, judicious elocution, and easy deportment. The expression of the tender, as well as of the violent, emotions of the heart was beyond his reach. The plain and the familiar rather than the striking and the vigorous, became him whose action was either forced or languid, and whose movements were ponderous or sluggish. From the retirement of Booth till the coming of Garrick, Quin can scarcely be said to have had a rival, unless it were the clever but lazy Delane, whose self-indulgence was not accompanied by the energy and industry which went with that of Quin. As Delane fell before Quin, so did Quin fall before the younger energy, and power, and perseverance, of Garrick. James's prophecy that the latter, in founding a new religion, – like Whitfield, would be followed for a time, but that people would all come to church again, was not fulfilled.

Nevertheless, it produced a very fair epigram: —

"Pope Quin, who damns all churches but his own,Complains that heresy affects the town.That Whitfield Garrick now misleads the age,And taints the sound religion of the stage.'Schism,' he cries, 'has turn'd the nation's brain!''But eyes will open, and to church again!'Thou great Infallible, forbear to roar,Thy bulls and errors are rever'd no more.When doctrines meet with gen'ral approbation,It is not Heresy, but Reformation."

Quin has left some reputation as a humourist. Biographers give the name of his tutor in Dublin, but they add that Quin was illiterate, a character which is hardly established by the best of his bons mots. That he was not well read, even in the literature of that profession, of which he was so distinguished a member, is certain; but he boasted that he could read men more readily than books, and it is certain that his observation was acute, and the application of what he learned thereby, electrically prompt.

If he was inexorable in enforcing the payment of what was due to him, he was also nobly generous with the fortune he amassed. Meanness was not among the faults of Quin. The greatest injury has been done to his memory by the publication of jests, of a very reprehensible character, and which were said to be his, merely to quicken their sale. He lived in coarse times, and his jokes may have been, now and then, of a coarse quality; but he also said some of the finest things that ever fell from the lips of an intellectual wit.

Of all Quin's jests, there is nothing finer than two which elicited the warm approval of Horace Walpole. Bishop Warburton, in company at Bath, spoke in support of prerogative. Quin said, "Pray, my Lord, spare me; you are not acquainted with my principles. I am a republican; and, perhaps, I even think that the execution of Charles I. might be justified." "Ay!" said Warburton, "by what law?" Quin replied: "By all the laws he had left them." Walpole saw the sum of the whole controversy couched in those eight monosyllables; and the more he examined the sententious truth the finer he found it. The Bishop thought otherwise, and "would have got off upon judgments." He bade the player remember that all the regicides came to violent ends, – a lie, but no matter. "I would not advise your Lordship," said Quin, "to make use of that inference, for, if I am not mistaken, that was the case of the twelve apostles." Archbishop Whately could not have more logically overthrown conclusions which discern God's anger in individual afflictions.

There is little wonder, then, that Warburton disliked Quin; indeed there was not much love lost between the two men, who frequently met as guests in the house of Ralph Allen, of Prior Park, Bath, – the original of Fielding's Squire Allworthy, and the uncle (Walpole says the father) of Warburton's wife. The Bishop, seldom courteous to any man, treated Quin with an offensively patronising air, and endeavoured to make him feel the distance between them. There was only a difference in their vocations, for Quin, by birth, was, perhaps, rather a better gentleman than Warburton. The latter once, at Allen's house, where the prelate is said to have admonished the player on his too luxurious way of living (the bishop, however, loving custard not less than the actor did John Dory), requested him, as he could not see him on the stage, to recite some passages from dramatic authors, in presence of a large company then assembled in the drawing-room. Quin made some little difficulty; but after a well-simulated hesitation consented, and stood up to deliver passages from "Venice Preserved;" but in reciting the lines he so pointedly directed his looks, at "honest men" to Allen, and at "knaves" to Warburton, that the company universally marked the application, and the bishop never asked for a taste of the actor's quality again. And yet he is reported to have imitated this very act, with less warrant for it. When Dr. Terrick had been recently (in 1764) promoted from Peterborough to the see of London, a preferment coveted by Warburton, the latter preached a sermon at the Chapel Royal, at which the new Bishop of London was present, amid more august members of the congregation. Warburton took occasion to say that a government which conferred the high trusts of the Church on illiterate and worthless objects betrayed the interests of religion; – and on saying so, he stared Terrick full in the face.

"Honest menAre the soft easy cushions on which knavesRepose and fatten,"

There was no man for whom Quin had such distaste as this unpleasant Bishop of Gloucester, who published an edition of Shakspeare. When this was announced, the actor remarked in the green-room of old Drury, "He had better mind his own Bible, and leave ours to us!" Quin was undoubtedly open to censure on the score of his epicurism. He is said to have so loved John Dory as to declare, that for the enjoyment of it, a man "should have a swallow from here to the antipodes, and palate all the way!" and we are told that if, on his servant calling him in the morning, he heard that there was no John Dory in the market, he would turn round, and lazily remark, "then call me again to-morrow." But these are tales more or less coloured to illustrate his way of life. There is one which has more probability in it, which speaks of another incident at Bath. Lord Chesterfield saw a couple of chairmen helping a heavy gentleman into a sedan, and he asked his servant if he knew who that stout gentleman was? "Only Mr. Quin, my lord, going home, as usual, from the 'Three Tuns.'" "Nay, sir," answered my lord, "I think Mr. Quin is taking one of the three home with him, under his waistcoat!"

His capacity was undoubtedly great, but the over-testing it occasionally affected his acting. An occasion on which he was playing Balance, in the "Recruiting Officer," Mrs. Woffington acting Sylvia, his daughter, affords an instance. In the second scene of the second act he should have asked his daughter, "Sylvia, how old were you when your mother died?" instead of which he said "married." Sylvia laughed, and being put out of her cue, could only stammer "What, sir?" "Pshaw!" cried the more confused justice; "I mean, how old were you when your mother was born?" Mrs. Woffington recovered her self-possession, and taking the proper cue, said, "You mean, sir, when my mother died. Alas! so young, that I do not remember I ever had one; and you have been so careful, so indulgent to me, ever since, that indeed I never wanted one."

In his latest days, his powers of retort never failed him. He was in that closing season when a fop condoled with him on growing old, and asked what the actor would give to be as young as he was? "I would almost be content to be as foolish!" was Quin's reply.

Old Hippisley, who, from a candle-snuffer became a favourite low comedian, owed much of his power of exciting mirth to a queer expression in his distorted face, caused by a scar from a severe burn. Having some intention to put his son on the stage, he asked Quin's advice as to the preparatory measures. "Hippy," said Quin, "you had better begin by burning him."

Nobody bore with his sharp sayings more cheerfully than Mrs. Woffington. We all know his remark, when Margaret, coming off the stage as Sir Harry Wildair, declared that she believed one half the house thought she was a man. Less known is his comment when, on asking her why she had been to Bath, she answered saucily, "Oh, for mere wantonness!" whereon Quin retorted with, "And have you been cured of it?"

He was one of the few men who could stand a fall with Foote, and come off the better man. Foote, who could not endure a joke made on himself, broke friendship with Quin on account of such offence. Ultimately, they were reconciled; but even then Foote referred to the provocation. "Jemmy, you should not have said that I had but one shirt, and that I lay a-bed while it was washed!" "Sammy," replied Quin, "I never could have said so, for I never knew that you had a shirt to wash!"

In the roughest of Quin's jests there was no harm meant, and many of his jokes manifested the kindliness of his heart. Here is an obscure actor, Dick Winston, lying, – hungry, weary, and disengaged, – on a truckle bed, in the neighbourhood of Covent Garden. He had wilfully forfeited an old engagement, turned itinerant, starved, and had returned, only to find his old place occupied. He is on his back, in utter despair, as Mr. Quin enters, followed by a man carrying a decent suit of clothes; and the great actor hails him with a "Now, Dick, how is it you are not up and at rehearsal?" Quin had heard of his distress, got him restored to his employment, and took this way of announcing it. Winston dressed himself in a state of bewilderment; a new dress and a new engagement, – but no cash wherewith to obtain a breakfast!" Mr. Quin," said he, unhesitatingly, "what shall I do for a little ready money, till Saturday arrives?" "Nay!" replied Quin; "I have done all I can for you; but as for money, Dick, you must put your hand in your own pocket." Quin had put a £10 note there!

Again; when Ryan asked, in an emergency, for a loan, the answer from Quin was, that he had nothing to lend; but he had left Ryan £1000 in his will, and Ryan might have that, if he were inclined to cheat the government of the legacy duty!

Frederick, Prince of Wales, was not half such a practically good patron to Thomson, as James Quin was. When the bard was in distress, Quin gave him a supper at a tavern, for half of which the poet expected he would have to pay; but the player designed otherwise. "Mr. Thomson," said he, "I estimate the pleasure I have had in perusing your works at £100 at least; and you must allow me to settle that account, by presenting you with the money." What are the small or the great faults of this actor of "all the Falstaffs," when we find his virtues so practical and lively? In return, the minstrel has repaid the good deed with a guerdon of song. In the Castle of Indolence, he says:

"Here whilom ligg'd th' Aesopus of the age;But, call'd by Fame, in soul ypricked deep,A noble pride restored him to the stage,And roused him like a giant from his sleep.Even from his slumbers we advantage reap:With double force th' enlivened scene he wakes,Yet quits not Nature's bounds. He knows to keepEach due decorum: now the heart he shakes,And now with well-urged sense th' enlightened judgment takes."

The actor had a great regard for the poet, and was not only active in bringing forward his posthumous tragedy, "Coriolanus," in which Quin played the principal character, in 1749, but spoke the Hon. George Lyttleton's celebrated prologue with such feeling, that he could not restrain his tears; and with such effect, that the audience were moved, it is said, in like manner: —

"He lov'd his friends; – forgave this gushing tear;Alas! I feel I am no actor here;"

and Quin's eyes glistened, as he went through the noble eulogy of a poet, whose

"Muse employ'd her heaven-taught lyre,None but the noblest passions to inspire;Not one immoral, one corrupted thought,One line, which, dying, he could wish to blot."

The last night Quin played as an engaged actor, was at Covent Garden, on the 15th of May 1751; the play was the "Fair Penitent," in which he acted Horatio to the Lothario of Barry, and the Calista of Mrs. Cibber. After this he quietly withdrew, without leave-taking, returning only once or twice to play for the benefit of a friend. In his later years, his professional income is said to have reached £1000 a year. He was the first English actor who received £50 a night, during a part of his career. The characters he created were in pieces which have died off the stage, save Comus, which he acted with effective dignity in the season of 1737-8; – a part in which Mr. Macready distinguished himself, during his memorable management of Drury Lane.

Quin's social position, after leaving the stage, was one congenial to a man of his merits, taste, and acquirements. He was a welcome guest at many noble hearths – from that of ducal Chatsworth to that of modest Allen's at Prior Park. At the former he and Garrick met. There had not been a cordial intimacy between the two as actors; but as private gentlemen they became friends. This better state of things was owing to the kindly feeling of Quin. The two men were left alone in a room at Chatsworth, and Quin made the first step towards a reconciliation by asking a question the most agreeable he could put – inquiring after Mrs. Garrick's health. In this scene the two men come before me as distinct as a couple of figures drawn by Meissonier – quaint in costume, full of character and life, pleasant to look at and to remember.

Quin was Garrick's guest at Hampton, when he was stricken in 1765 with the illness which ultimately proved fatal. He died, however, in his own house in Bath. "I could wish," he said the day before, "that the last tragic scene were over; and I hope I may be enabled to meet and pass through it with dignity." He passed through it becomingly on the 21st of January 1766; and Garrick placed the following lines on the old actor's tomb in the Abbey – a pyramid of Sienna marble, bearing a medallion portrait of Quin, resting on a sarcophagus, on which the inscription is engraved, supported by the mask of Thalia and the dagger of Melpomene.

"That tongue which set the table in a roar,And charmed the public ear, is heard no more;Clos'd are those eyes, the harbingers of wit,Which spake, before the tongue, what Shakspere writ.Cold is that hand which, living, was stretch'd forthAt friendship's call, to succour modest worth.Here lies James Quin. Deign, reader, to be taught,Whate'er thy strength of body, force of thought,In nature's happiest mould however cast,To this complexion thou must come at last."

Kind-hearted people have remarked that Garrick never said so much to, or of, Quin when he was alive. Perhaps not. He struggled with Quin for mastery – vanquished him; became his friend, and hung up over his grave a glowing testimony to his talent and his virtues. This was in the spirit of old chivalry. What would kind-hearted people have? Was it not well in Garrick to speak truthfully of one dead whom, when living, he thus with pleasant satire described as soliloquising at the tomb of Duke Humphrey at St. Albans —

"A plague on Egypt's art, I say!Embalm the dead! On senseless clayRich wines and spices waste!Like sturgeon, or like brawn, shall IBound in a precious pickle lie,Which I can never taste?Let me embalm this flesh of mineWith turtle fat, and Bordeaux wine,And spoil th' Egyptian trade!Than Humphry's Duke more happy I,Embalm'd alive, old Quin shall dieA mummy ready made."

As a tailpiece to this sketch, I cannot, I think, do better than subjoin Foote's portrait of Quin, which, I will hope, was not drawn to disparage any of Quin's great survivors, but in all honesty and sincerity. "Mr. Quin's deportment through the whole cast of his characters is natural and unaffected, his countenance expressive without the assistance of grimace, and he is, indeed, in every circumstance, so much the person he represents, that it is scarcely possible for any attentive spectator to believe that the hypocritical, intriguing Maskwell, the suspicious superannuated rake, the snarling old bachelor, and the jolly, jocose Jack Falstaff are imitated, but real persons.

"And here I wish I had room and ability to point out the severe masterly strokes with which Mr. Quin has often entertained my imagination, and satisfied my judgment, but, under my present confinement, I can only recommend the man who wants to see a character perfectly played, to see Mr. Quin in the part of Falstaff; and if he does not express a desire of spending an evening with that merry mortal, why, I would not spend one with him, if he would pay my reckoning."

"With a bottle of claret and a full house," it may well be concluded, from all concurrent testimony, Quin was, in fat Jack, unapproachable. In the traditions of the stage, he still remains the Falstaff, though Henderson was subsequently thought to have equalled him in many of the points of that character.

Finally, Quin's will is not uninstructive as an illustration of the actor's character. There is, perhaps, not a friend he had possessed, or servant who had been faithful to him, who is forgotten in it. Various are the bequests, from £50 to a cousin practising medicine in Dublin, to £500 and a share of the residue to a kind-hearted oilman in the Strand. To one individual he bequeaths his watch, in accordance with an "imprudent promise" to that effect. James Quin did not like the man, but he would not break his word! Requiescat in pace!